The present invention relates to an apparatus for measuring amylose and/or amylopectin content in rice.
This invention is particularly suitable for use in an apparatus for evaluating the quality of rice grains as disclosed in the applicant's prior application, U.S. Ser. No. 24,139. By reference to the applicant's prior application, the disclosure therein is incorporated in this specification.
Amylose or amylopectin content in starch has conventionally been measured by the use of a chemical method such as iodine colorimetric method or ioometric electric current titration method.
The above chemical method has such problems that considerable skill is required for measurement, variation in measurement results is large, and a long time is necessary for measurement. The reason for this is that the amylose and amylopectin contained in rice are approximate in composition to each other in that both of them are an isomer of a substance in which several hundreds of grape sugar molecules C.sub.6 H.sub.12 O.sub.6 are coupled to each other.